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Joseph, Mary in bed billboard set for NZ

An Auckland church is hoisting a mischievous billboard intended to provoke conversation about spiritual matters at Christmas.

St Matthew-in-the-City will be putting up a Christmas billboard on Thursday that will feature an illustration the church felt could disturb some.

On it, Mary and Joseph are in bed. Joseph looks down dejected. Mary looks sad. The caption reads: "Poor Joseph. God is a hard act to follow."

It was intended to challenge stereotypes about the way that Jesus was conceived and get people talking about the Christmas story, the church said.

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Church vicar Archdeacon Glynn Cardy said it had already generated plenty of discussion in its "conception phase".

"At Bethlehem low-life shepherds and heathen travellers are welcome while the powerful and the priests aren't. The stories introduce the topsy-turvy way of God, where the outsiders are invited in and the insiders ushered out," he said on the church's website.

"The true importance of Christmas" was in the radical hospitality Jesus offered to the poor, the despised, women, children, and the sick.

"His death was a consequence of the offensive nature of that hospitality and his resurrection a symbolic vindication."

Last week a campaign by New Zealand Atheist Bus Campaign raised $NZ20,000 ($A15,935) in public donations to fund bus ads which read "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life".

Those ads created a storm when they ran on the London Underground and British buses this year. Similar ads have run in the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain, Australia, Finland and Germany.